On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers took control of four commercial airplanes. Two struck the World Trade Center’s twin towers in Lower Manhattan, a third hit the Pentagon, and a fourth, aimed at Washington, D.C., crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back. Nearly 3,000 people died that morning, most of them in New York, where both towers collapsed within two hours of the first impact.
The attacks reordered American life almost overnight, from airport security to two wars to a new Department of Homeland Security. Some Lower Manhattan firms lost most of their workforce in a single morning. New Yorkers of all ages and occupations were killed in the terrorist attacks 25 years ago, and those who survived have stories of how they were kept away: a pregnant woman who went into labor; a football game that went a little too late the night before; an alarm that never went off. Twenty-five years on, some of the people who were supposed to be in or near the towers continue recalling their fateful day. Among them include current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Senator Mitt Romney.
Lutnick, then CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, worked out of the North Tower’s 105th floor and was normally at his desk by 6 a.m. His wife had him take their son to school instead. “So it was my son Kyle’s first day of kindergarten,” he told NPR in 2016. His phone kept ringing without connecting that morning; he later learned it was his brother, Gary, trying to reach him to say goodbye. Gary, who went to work as usual, was among the 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died.
